IBAR is proud to announce that it will host a symposium to tie in with the launch of Caryl Phillips new novel The Lost Child, a prequel to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847). It will echo the historical context and themes of the work discussing black presences across generations in the North from the 1770s to the present. It will be an interdisciplinary symposium which will bring together historians, visual artists, cultural critics and writers. It will discuss The Lost Child in its widest Black Atlantic and Northern British context and highlight links and contexts that enable a variety of other writers and artists including the Brontës to be discussed. This will create dynamic new interpretations of British culture in this rarely heard context of the North and the Black Atlantic. It will include two readings from Caryl Phillips at UCLAN and at the Brontë Parsonage Museum Haworth. The symposium will spend the second afternoon in Haworth and there will be an opportunity to explore Brontë Country with a guided tour from our own Victorian expert Dr. Theresa Saxon.
Our two keynote presenters are Dr. Jessica Moody (University of Portsmouth) an expert on Liverpool and its memory of slavery and Dr. Fionnghuala Sweeney (Newcastle University) an expert on Ireland, Britain and the Black Atlantic.
Visual Artists presenting their work include IBAR’s own Professor Lubaina Himid,
Manchester-based Kooj (Kuljit) Chuhan and Scarborough-born Jade Montserrat.
New York film-maker Sikay Tang will present her film Toby’s Paradise about the sojourn from Liverpool to Shanghai of a Nigerian-born sailor.
Joe Williams (Heritage Corner, Leeds) will perform his solo play, The Fishes of Isis, an insightful portrait of Pablo Fanque, the British-born Victorian circus owner of African origin. (http://heritagecornerleeds.wix.com/heritage-corner#!).

Other contributors include:
Professor Bénédicte Ledent (University of Liège)
Professor Evelyn O’Callaghan (University of the West Indies)
Professor John McLeod (University of Leeds)
Professor Brian Ward (University of Northumbria)
For the full programme click here

"Ireland in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette" Julie Donovan, George Washington University
"Frenchness, Irishness, and the Narrative Potential for Representing Female Desire in Charlotte Brontë" Elaine Andrews, Pennsylvania State University
"From French Silk to Moroccan Sandals: Rendering Costumes for Charlotte Brontë’s Early Writings" Leslie Yarmo, Salisbury University
"‘How English is Miss Snowe’? Pink Frocks and a French Clock in Jane Eyre and Villette" Judith Pike, Salisbury University (Source)